The very idea of a "just war" strikes me as oxymoronic. I'll conceed that wars are occassionaly fought out of absolute necessity. However, I remain unconvinced that necessity equals justice. The truth is: If you truly believe that all people are born equal, than you can never refer to a war as "just". Amongst the American public, I've identified roughly three different view points on war. These three views are not intended to be a label to pidgeon hole to others. They are extremes which reside within all of us to varying extents."If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." -George Orwell
"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets." -Voltaire
The Extremists are the most militaristic of views. They see war as a way to bring out the best qualities of men: courage, comradeship, and sacrifice. They are nationalistic; they place their country or faction beyond good and evil. To them, the declared enemy of their country becomes sub-human. They often refer to an entire nationality or race as a whole, rather than a plurality. They say things like, "You know, the Muslims hate America..." In America, this group tends to use the defeat of Fascism in WWII as grounds for their belief that "America always fights for freedom".
The Extremists show a remarkable ability for ignoring the "unpleasant" parts of our history. They look back on WWII and see the cheering French school girls throwing flowers at the American G.I.s; but they ignore the images of burned Japanese school children suffering from radiation sickness after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The images of hundreds of thousands of charred bodies from the fire-bombings of Tokyo and Dresden are not acknowledged by them. To them, anyone who mentions the atrocities of the United States is an enemy, un-American, or "trying to hamper the war effort".
The Majority of Americans fall into the second group which I'll label the moderates. The moderates love to weigh wars as either "just" or "unjust". They do not blindly support any war that is made in the name of their country. Unlike the Extremists, the majority of Moderates will judge Vietnam to be an "unjust" war. Typically, the moderates will gauge a war's justness using systems of morality which are rooted in organized religion. Indeed, the Vatican was worked out a rather detailed set of doctrines to judge the morality of a war. However, today the moderates tend to judge the Iraqi war by strict party lines.
The third group, I will call the Pacifists, but I will not use the word in the ordinary sense. These pacifists are typically found among the radical-leftist, anarchists and the extreme-environmentalists. George Orwell observed this very group in his 1944 essay Notes on Nationalism:
But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defense of western countries... All in all it is difficult not to feel that pacifism, as it appears among a section of the intelligentsia, is secretly inspired by an admiration for power and successful cruelty.It should be noted that these pacifists were much more insidious in Orwell's day; Imagine living in England in 1944, London is bombed into ruins, you've spent your nights in underground shelters- counting the explosions from the salvos... than some intellectual tells you that we are committing atrocities in Germany, and that we should withdraw troops and let the Nazis invade. Today, this breed of pacificism is at most a nuisance.
These pacifists suffer from almost comical delusions. They believe that if we disbanded our military, that all of the world would magically join hands and sing We are the World. They will speak of America as though it were a group of sadists who were hell bent on bombing civilians for pure pleasure. They think France opposes us out of a desire to "save the childern". Similar to pro-lifers, they love to shoving pictures of dead corpses as a way of "waking people up".
All in all, a quick discussion with this group will reveal that they are totally ignorant of history, international politics, or current events(beyond the current events that share their political slants and interests). In the end, one gets the sense that they are not interested in the coherence, truth, or practicality of their views. Rather, it would seem that their views are formulated out of a self-centered desire to appear righteous.
I disagree with all three groups. War is a hellish tragedy which could never be ethically justified. However, the world is a dangerous place, and until we solve problems as large as national, economic, ethnic, and religious rivalries, we can expect much more war. I try to take a view of war which is free of political ideals and cultural bias. Expect that post in the near future.
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